The close up pic from yesterday is a beautiful fringed rosette lichen (Physcia stellaris) - magnificent! The intricate beauty and varied surface is stunning.
It's a common species found in North America, usually on bark or rocks. Those dark discs are its fruiting bodies that produce spores. Now, even more amazing, is that this particular little piece of perfection that I found is less than an inch across. Here it is next to my thumbnail for reference:
Lichens are composites of fungi and algae (or bacteria) - they combine their individual capabilities to function as one. The book Ways of Enlichenment invites us to view lichens in an open-minded way - as fungal greenhouses, algal farmsteads, ecosystems, organisms or as emergent property.
I hope you are happy to have been enlichened.
